Hiding in the Dark
by Nazgul

Comment:
Beautiful place captured in a beautiful scene. Well chosen title too. Like the colors and how the cloud with darknes come in form the top/back. The sharpness is great to, especially on the face.
One of my favourits. Good luck!

Past Her Bedtime
by dsa157

Comment:
Awesome picture!
I like the light in her face very much and the expression: very concentrated. Also the complete darknes surrounding her adds a lot to the mood of this picture. One of my favorits. Good luck!

Break!
by wingy

Comment:
Congrats for your marvelous photo.

Fountain of Youth
by dsa157

Comment:
Yeah! Great that you and your son got a ribbon for this marvellous image.
Was my favourite as you know.
Now that I know that it is your son I even better understand the title.
It was probably the eye that made most of us voters believe that he is a girl. Also his beard isn't that strong at the moment! How old is he?

Jörg

Ready to Go
by md8speed

Comment:
Hey, that's a Toyota, isn't it? Looks like my Camry.
Like the reflections from the rain. It's well exposed. The tilt is a little strong for my taste.

Bachelorette Central
by flip89

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club
Hi Ken, got you again!

Initial thoughts/My opinion
LOL! As tacky as can be! Frontal composition works well here. Great colours, also on the border.

Content/Composition
As others already commented, this is extremely tacky with a good portion of bizarreness. Very well chosen.
I thing you did the composition just right by giving the viewer a full view to the displayed objects, allowing him/her to let the eyes walk around and laugh here and there. There are so many things to look at, focusing on just one item might have not been as good. What I especially like is that the "tree" decoration hangs across the eyes of the "lady".
A strong element in your composition is the border: it looks almost like being the window frame and probably nobody would be surprised if the real window frame would look like that. Therefore it would have been better to crop more at the bottom.

Camera work -technically
Looks fine too me, maybe a tad underexposed (-1/3 EV or so). Focus is just right. Whitebalance too.

Digital Processing - Technical
Sharpening has been well done, it could have been brightened up a little though. As mentioned great job on the border.

Fits the challenge
Yeeeeeeeeees!

Good luck for your further submissions!

The Ugliest Ornaments.... EVER
by ahaze

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club

Initial thoughts/My opinion
Ugly? No. Tacky, yes (still not sure about the term tacky though). Nicely composed, a little on the dark side.

Content/Composition
I believe your submission would have done way better with a different title. When I saw the image during voting I was really amazed about the title and thought "Our 7 years old would love to have our tree only made up with these dolls". So to me the title came out a little harsh. And your story behind these ornaments tell me that you don't see them as soooo ugly too.
Of course, the dolls might be the ugliest ornaments given to you by your grandmother, but the voters didn't know.
Coming to the image itself, I have to say that it is nicely composed with the tree as background and the dolls left and right. Only the light in the middle is to bright. You may have avoided this be shining some light from a desk lamp or so onto the dolls, so you could have used a shorter shutter time. This would have also brightened up the whole scene (of course, too bright should be avoided).
I like the green glow on the boy's hair.

Camera work -technically
Focus is set fine, just a little underexposed. Also the white balance seems a little of: the image has an orange cast.

Digital Processing - Technical
The issues exposure and white balance could have been addressed very easily digitally, because the picture quality itself is good enough to withstand some alteration without starting to look digitally overdone.
I thing that a stronger, multiple colour border might have been better for this kind of image too.

Fits the challenge
Of course it does.

Good luck for your further submissions

Not everything that counts can be counted; not everything that can be counted counts.
by alyrivero

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club

Initial thoughts/My opinion
Well thought of title and subject, composition too tight.

Content/Composition
I think that the elements you put into your picture are well chosen, whereas the way you arranged them makes a problem. The stack of coins and the bills dominate the whole picture, whereas the non-countable things on the To-Do list are hard to get, although they should be more important IMO. Without the added text, you could have titled your submission also "Go for the money and leave the rest to others".
So a different arrangement including also some more space would have probably done better.
The picture has also some items that make it busy and somewhat "unclean": the white paper on which everything is place was not so well chosen, black would be better, at the right side one sees bended paper which attracts the viewers eyes because he/she wants to know what it is, but there is nothing. Finally the strong shadow from the left coin-stack bring in an element of unrest.
Speaking of shadow, light has to be addressed too. While it is not too harsh and the reflections on the coins wouldn't disturb much if they were not been shown so large, there is a gradient in the light from the lower front to the upper back. Again, this contradicts somehow the message you wanted to tell, i.e. the money should have better been placed in the dark and the text in the light.

Camera work -technically
Focus is not too narrow, that's OK, however, as discussed above the focalpoint is set on the money instead of the "non-countable list". In an reversed composition, using a smaller DOF with blurred money might have been great. The light is too harsh, I suggest bouncing it first to a piece of paper or using natural daylight.
However, exposure is set right, just not used as compositional element as stated above.

Digital Processing - Technical
No particular issue here regarding the image itself. The text is somehow squeezed into the edge.
The border is OK with me, you should only avoid that the border colour exactly matches with image parts close to the border. Here this happened with the black TO-DO List text in the upper right, making the border invisible.

Fits the challenge
Of course it does and the selected topic is a very good one IMO.

Good luck for your further submissions

good exuses
by MadMordegon

Comment:
Greetings from the Critique Club

Initial thoughts/My opinion
Great funny submission, technically well made, should have done better. Has some compositional issues.

Content/Composition
The general concept in combination it well thought of. Of course some voters might have had problems in seeing the motivation, but to me that is not an issue.
To me the image is actually too clean: the main focal point, the chair and the PC in the back, are too clean and very inviting. Only the left desk looks a little messy, but still not too strong. And that's my main issue: intention and image do not fit as well as they probably could. Also the overexposed window brings too much order in the image.
The soft light and the warm colour choice make it very cosy, even for people (not me :)) who like a tidy desk.
So turning the camera more to the messy parts might have been a better choice.
I do like the way the light is set though: as mentioned, the softness is great and that the window is overexposed is something I like as an compositional element too.

Camera work -technically
Looks good to me: everything is sharp and exposure is good too.

Digital Processing - Technical
Again good work here: especially I like how you brightened up the lower portion for the text. In principle I do like that for the border too, but where the bright areas of the border overlap with the one for the text there is a sharp boundary which is not so good.
I like the font you selected.

Fits the challenge
Yes it does (see above). I only would have skipped the second line: it's not necessary to get the message through.

Good luck for your further submissions

Text-book landing
by marbo

Comment:
Being a hobby pilot myself I have to say that this looks realy like a textbook landing, allthough the front wheel could be a little higher. Like how you combined great sharpnes with just a bit of motion in the propeller. A narrower DOF blurring the background would have been great, but technically for sure not achievable directly from the camera. Great submission and a 9 from me.